Life in progress

Monthly Archives: July 2014


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Copyright Infringement: A Warning to all Authors

Attention writers AND readers. If your book is on this site, ask them to take it down. If you decide to grab a free ebook, beware of viruses. This site is giving away books without the authors’ permissions!

Tim Baker's avatarblindoggbooks

I would like to share a letter sent to me by a fellow independent author, who wishes to remain anonymous, about a website claiming to be promoting independent authors, when in reality it appears that they are offering free downloads of the work of dozens of us.

If you are an author, independent or otherwise, I urge you to read this letter and investigate the site yourself. Find out if your work is posted there and take appropriate action to have it removed, or, at the very least, make sure you are willing to grant permission to the site owners to list your work.

Making money as an independent author is difficult enough without pirating sites giving our work away under false pretenses AND without our permission.

Please share, tweet or reblog this post in order to spread the word through the independent author community and, hopefully, put some pressure…

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Dragonfly

The piece of wood it’s sitting on is an inch thick…

CAM00309

 

Unfortunately my phone’s camera didn’t pick up the rainbow of colours in its wings. So big and yet so delicate.


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One-Liner Wednesday – Writer’s Block?

“Trying to understand is like straining through muddy water. Have the patience to wait! Be still and allow the mud to settle.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching _____________________________________________________________________________________

Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.

The rules that I’ve made for myself for “One-Liner Wednesday” are as follows:

1. Make it one sentence.

2. Make it either funny or inspirational.

Have fun!


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Random Update

I spent a fun-filled day playing Scribblenauts Unlimited on the WiiU with Alex, John, and John’s youngest daughter. That’s only slightly sarcastic – I could do without playing the game again, but we did have a few laughs. Alex is generally glad to be back home. He enjoys playing with his half-brother at his dad’s but routine is routine.

On the Camp NaNo front, I was within 1,600 words of completing my goal of 25,000 and there are still ten days left so I upped my goal to 30,000 words. I know I’m not going to be able to stop writing this one until I’m finished but I am forcing myself to take a break occasionally and edit the first one.

However, I’m having a bit of a difficult time with genre issues – or at least theme. The issue is with my new villain. She’s oversexed so of course the topic of sex keeps coming up. Where the first novel has its erotic moments, (and okay, a couple of decent sex scenes) this one is beginning to compete with 50 Shades of Grey, if not with the constant porn then at least the mention of body parts and, let’s say, warmer feelings. I may be able to tone it down but I can’t cut it out and keep my character in character. You can see my dilemma, right? What would you do? Have you ever read a sequel that strayed far away from the tone of the first… and did you like the second one? Or is this just a recipe for failure?

On that note, and in the spirit of randomness, here’s a picture of the sun setting over Boston Pizza.

 

sunset

 


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And I’m Back

Real life starts again in a couple of hours when the kids come back home from their dad’s. For now I think I’ll just share a few pictures I took in Kingston a week ago, before I got sick.

Will catch up with everything and everyone tomorrow. Click for larger images. Enjoy!


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I’m Away!

I made it to Kingston again! Remember, that place where I got so sick last week on holiday that I ended up in the hospital? Yep, same place. But a different hotel this time.

I’m sitting now in the same motel where one of my characters fled after finding out some very bad news in my novel. I’m finding out little details about the place. Like, for instance, how the rooms are numbered, what the rooms actually look like and oh yes! That it took ten full minutes for my WP stats page to load on their pathetic free WiFi service. I’m typing this in a document and will try to post it when… oh look, now no internet connection at all. I can’t really complain though. My character didn’t have a lot of money to work with, and you get what you pay for, right?

I did spend some time downtown again tonight. I went to a delightful restaurant (with no food poisoning this time) and sat on the patio with a glass of Pinot Grigio and a grilled seafood salad that was entirely divine. Then I went to for a walk by the lake and took a few pictures.

Strangely enough, I felt lonely. That doesn’t happen to me very often, but tonight, seeing all the couples hand-in-hand and noticing that even the ducks were in pairs, made me feel a little sorry for myself. Most of the time, as I said, I’m happy to be alone. But there are times when I feel sad at the prospect of growing old alone. I wonder if I’m missing something. Scratch that – I know I’m missing something. Just reading my own novel makes me remember what it was like to be young and in love. Ah, the things we throw away without realising the consequences. By the time we’re wise enough to see it, it’s too late.

Anyway, that’s where I am, and that’s what my connectivity is like. I’ll catch up with everything tomorrow when I get back home.

Hopefully I’ll actually get this posted before I get there.


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Stream of Consciousness Saturday – As an aside

As an aside – isn’t that just another way to say I’m planning to digress from my original thought?

And what is an original thought. No such thing.

But we all have to start somewhere. We have a thought and we run with it, do we not? Sometimes that thought becomes something that others find interesting and then at other times our audience will begin to struggle to pay attention. If we’re in a social setting they will act restless, which is a sign to either shut up or change the subject – or get back on it.

Does this post have a subject?

As an aside, my mother’s dog died. Oh this was years and years ago. Maybe around 1988. She phoned me to tell me but I was at a party at the time, and didn’t have the time or the concentration to really pay attention to what she was saying. And so I hung up after saying that I was sorry, and I’d call her back the next day. Which I did. And then I visited her and consoled her over the loss of her dog.

Where was I?

Oh yes. We were talking about “asides.” At least I was. Are you still following me?

I thought not.

 

This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-1914/


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The Friday Reminder and Prompt for SoCS July 19/14

Friday’s here again–this week has gone by so fast, as time off is wont to do–and that means it’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday tomorrow. I’ve been so absorbed in my novels for the past few days that I haven’t really put much thought into this week’s prompt. So I’m just going with a random, just ‘coz word for everyone to play with in their post.

Your Friday prompt for Saturday’s Stream of Consciousness post is “side.” Add a prefix or a suffix or use it as is.

After you’ve written your Saturday post tomorrow, please link it here at the prompt page in the comments so others can find it and see your awesome Stream of Consciousness post. Don’t hesitate to join in!

Here are the rules:

1. Your post must be stream of consciousness writing, meaning no editing, (typos can be fixed) and minimal planning on what you’re going to write.

2. Your post can be as long or as short as you want it to be. One sentence – one thousand words. Fact, fiction, poetry – it doesn’t matter. Just let the words carry you along until you’re ready to stop.

3. There will be a prompt every week. I will post the prompt here on my blog on Friday, along with a reminder for you to join in. The prompt will be one random thing, but it will not be a subject. For instance, I will not say “Write about dogs”; the prompt will be more like, “Make your first sentence a question,” or “Begin with the word ‘The’.”

4. Ping back! It’s important, so that I and other people will come and read your post! The way to ping back, is to just copy and paste the URL of my post somewhere on your post. Then your URL will show up in my comments, for everyone to see. For example, in your post you can copy and paste the following: This post is part of SoCS: https://lindaghill.wordpress.com/2014/07/18/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-1914/  The most recent pingbacks will be found at the top.

5. Read at least one other person’s blog who has linked back their post. Even better, read everyone’s! If you’re the first person to link back, you can check back later, or go to the previous week, by following my category, “Stream of Consciousness Saturday,” which you’ll find right below the “Like” button on my post.

6. Copy and paste the rules (if you’d like to) in your post. The more people who join in, the more new bloggers you’ll meet and the bigger your community will get!

7. Have fun!


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Dear WordPress Staff

I’m not alone in this! Read and re-blog if you agree.


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WordPress – If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

It seems every week WordPress is changing something else. I’m still flabbergasted over clicking on my “posts” button and seeing them all in a reader-type list instead of a list where I can easily find twenty of them and edit them quickly in one click.

Then, was it last week? we had to start going into our dashboard to open a full screen with all the options (including being able to preview our post) in order to write something – instead of this “beep beep boop” crap I keep seeing.

Today, it seems, they’ve changed something else. The “Freshly Pressed” button is gone. Not that I often check the page, but where do I find it now?

Is there anyone out there who has found these changes an improvement? Or am I the only one who thinks they’re more of a pain in the ass?

 

Edit: My notifications box isn’t lighting up today either. Is anyone else having this problem? Check your notifications just in case!